About Salty Endeavors

It is hard to begin to tell you about Salty Endeavors without it sounding like a biography of my life. That is because for more than 20 years Salty Endeavors has been synonymous with me – Henry C. Schultz, III. I figure if you actually clicked on this link and are reading this then you likely have a genuine interest in how Salty Endeavors came about. So…

When I was about 5 years of age my father purchased the family home a saltwater aquarium. I was instantly mesmerized. I should note this is a suburb of Chicago around about 1980 so not only were we extremely far from the ocean, but the saltwater aquarium hobby was in it’s infancy. Keeping fish alive was a very difficult task and corals were essentially impossible.

Fast forward about 15 years: the saltwater aquarium hobby has really taken off as water quality issues have come leaps and bounds and a fair number of fish are now easily kept in aquariums. Certain corals are thriving in aquariums because hobbyist figured out proper lighting which mimics the sun. I now live in my own apartment on a college campus where I’ve maxed out a credit card to purchase more and more aquariums, supplies, and fish.

By the time I was 21 i was breeding several species of marine fish for retail sale in the aquarium industry. At this time in the industry this was virtually unheard of because getting marine fish to spawn was next to impossible, and when they did spawn getting the fry nutritional food was next to impossible. I was literally growing marine plankton in my college apartment to feed fish barely visible to the human eye. I was also cutting and regrowing coral for sale or trade – what would later become known as fragging coral. To do this I was using bone cutters and a Dremel. All of this got the attention of public aquariums directors whom were emailing me asking me for tips.

This was about the time I decided to jump into the deep end with both feet. Myself and two partners founded a website – ReefCentral.com – a website dedicated the marine aquarist. I’ve long since left the website but at one point it dominated the internet for real, factual information on marine home aquariums. From this website spawned our magazine Reefkeeping, of which I became one of the monthly contributing authors. Eventually my work started to get published around the globe – 5 languages in all! – and I was invited to speak around the country to marine aquarium societies. I started a marine aquarium installation and maintenance company aka I got to play with more aquariums but use other people’s money to do it! Eventually this lead to a greenhouse full of coral in the middle of a corn field in Central Illinois. Finally I couldn’t take being land locked any further and I finally left the USA where I learned to become a scuba instructor, traveled, taught scuba, and farmed corals for reef restoration projects.

Somewhere in the early stages of my online life, perhaps as early as 1996, www.saltyendeavors.com was born. I decided it was time for me to have my own personal website and document things like fish breeding, coral fragging, and generally all things aquarium, plus of course my scuba trips and underwater photography from around the globe. Since the original website I cannot begin to tell you how many reformats I’ve made to it, personal website to business website to travel blog and to ultimately how you see it today – a scuba business in magnificent Cozumel, Mexico.

Each one of those creations had several web designs to it as well. I couldn’t make up my mind on how I wanted my website to look! Mostly because I wasn’t any good at web design. This much is sure – I was much better at marine fish husbandry and scuba diving than I am at building websites!

But what stayed the same through those 20 years was the url www.saltyendeavors.com

The original intent was meant to be a play on words; a double-entendre. And it has never lost it’s original intent.

Salty Endeavors is my passion, my dream. I’ve started the scuba operation in Cozumel from the ground up. Officially we started operations on December 1, 2016. Since that time I’ve slowly been building it to what it is today.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of Salty Endeavors since beginning Cozumel operations I would encourage you to read our blog category About Salty Endeavors. As time goes by I’ll slowly document more of our past in more detail, both in how we started (and before) and to the present and how we are growing.

I’m looking forward to telling the story one chapter at a time.

Wouldn't you rather be Salty?

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